...about Attention Deficit disorder regarding Jonah.
For many years, we have wondered if this was an issue for Jonah. We would always ask the IEP team each year if they felt it was a problem for Jonah and for many years we were told "Not yet" or "Not really."
Then in 2020, in 3rd grade, his team began to indicate they thought Jonah was now showing some clear signs of attention deficit being a problem for him.
But then like most things that occurred in 2020, COVID happened and this conversation got put on hold.
Then for 4th grade, Jonah's health took a severe detour with kidney and bladder problems. Plus his schooling was very different- a combination of virtual learning, mom-schooling, and shorter hours of actually at school. Most kids I think were challenged with attention issues during all this hybrid schooling.
His team said they definitely felt like Jonah was struggling with attention issues, but we did not feel like last year was the time to start addressing a new issue for Jonah with everything else that was going on already.
So now Jonah is in 5th grade in person full time at school. And yes, his teachers are quite sure Jonah has attention issues.
I don't know how to feel about this.
I know Jonah has trouble focusing, especially when he is in a distracting place.
I know Jonah can sometimes "act up" when he is sick of focusing on a task for longer than 10-15 minutes.
I know that sometimes Jonah can just zone out on you, and you just have to wait it out for him to come back to you.
I know that Ben rarely struggles with staying on task. Ben is very driven and wants to get things done.
However, I also know that many times I think Jonah is not paying attention only to realize he heard each and every word I was saying.
I also don't completely understand how much of his inability to stay on task is because of Down syndrome versus attention deficit disorder.
I also don't know how much of Jonah's difficulty to stay on task is a personality issue? Ben has a very different personality than Jonah. Ben is a more forceful serious person with more drive. Jonah is more laid back and likes to have fun.
I also know that Jonah's ability to have many "movies" playing in his head at one time is part of what makes him so special and unique. The kid is always creating or re-creating scenes in his head. He is always making associations between what he is currently doing and something he previously did. He has an imagination that I can't begin to imagine it's potential sometimes.
Like this morning, in his first 15 minutes downstairs from his bedroom at 6 am, he had created the Museum of Natural Science from the movie "Night at the Museum". He had "exhibits" that stretched from our living room to our front door. It looked like a major mess to me, but in his mind, he was Larry the security guard walking the halls of the museum in New York City.
Is this a problem?
Or is this creativity a gift?
Do we medicate that away?
I don't know.
But I think we at least have to start the conversation.
So our pediatrician wants us to fill out behavior rating forms as well as Jonah's teacher. Then our doctor will talk to Jonah's teacher. From there he will assess if he feels attention deficit is an issue for Jonah. Then I'm guessing he will present his ideas on how that might be treated. Then Andrew and I will have to take all that information and assess what we feel is in Jonah's best interest.
Here is a good resource I found. It contains the behavior rating forms that the doctor provided us with.
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